Making common cause with people with whom one disagrees about many other issues is a natural state of affairs for most libertarians. Since we are such a minority, we can only make progress seeking out allies on the Left and Right on particular issues. It was so natural to me that I was caught short when I ran Equal Marriage Arizona to find that many other people have no desire to do this. They will not make common cause with you on an issue with which they agree with you 100% if they disagree with you on an array of unrelated issues. I have now come to the conclusion that the latter attitude is more common than the former. The problem with politics is, IMO, not the lack of compromise, but this lack of ability to make common cause across political lines on narrow issues. Thus, for example, Elizabeth Warren is unable to make common cause with Republicans on the Ex-Im Bank, despite the fact it hits on two of her hot buttons (corporate subsidies and crony insider benefits for Wall Street bankers).

Yeah, but the OW wants regs that will actually benefit those they protest. The Tea Party wants to restrain the government and that will actually hurt the big guys, by allowing the small ones room to grow. If you're big, you can pay someone $50k to track compliance, while the small guy that might impact their whole business model. Look at Europe and the turn over of the big names, as they restrain the government, the names turned over unlike before.

ofek5

I doubt the wall St. crowds believe in limited government, their beef against corporations is not because of crony capitalism that stem from "big government" .
unlimited goverment outside the boundries of its constitutional constrains is not even something they identify as PROBLEM, for them crony capitalism is possible tactic if it leads to redistribution of wealth for institutions and desires they PREFER. in fact "big goverment" is an intended result for them to achieve utopian social justice and equality so they dont really have anything in common with the tea party which is by itself is a response to BLUNT crony capitalism nursed by goverment breaching its constitutional limitations.

iron308

The problem may not be an inability to make common cause, but rather the difference between a particular politicians positioning for the benefit of the low information voter vs their actual policy goals and/or influence pedaling behind the scenes.

Cari Beth

The main problem with Eliz Warren is that she does not truly see a problem with the Ex-im period. She still supports it despite her supposed dislike of cronyism.

Kyle Hamilton

You said you don't have a reference for where you found the lead-in graphic.

I never thought that my ability to pattern-recognize against blurry images (being able to score 20/20 vision across an emergency room visual test without my glasses, when I'm nearsighted with astigmatism) would be able to help me figure out what the bottom text of a shrunken and quality-lowered compression of a graphic posted on the Internet actually said, well enough to be able to find the original.

Kyle Hamilton

Oops, I didn't see this reply before I investigated and found specific URLs. Good sleuthing, I salute you!